


We Found Each Other In The Dark

by Schwoozie



Category: Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: F/M, First Time, Reunions, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-10
Updated: 2014-10-31
Packaged: 2018-02-04 04:52:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 9,146
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1766173
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Schwoozie/pseuds/Schwoozie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the funeral home, after Gabriel, after everything, Beth's spent months on her own; enough time to lose herself. When she finally finds her family, it's up to Daryl to bring her back.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. In The Wilderness

**Author's Note:**

> This is going to end up being around four chapters (plus a prologue that I'll post when the rest is finished). I hope you enjoy!
> 
> Thanks to the lovely milkshakemicrowave

Beth doesn't remember much—sometimes she can hardly remember the shape of her own face—but she remembers food. The taste of canned peaches, and her momma’s homemade pies, and half-charred snakeskin that falls in pieces to her lap. She can feel the texture of it clear on her tongue: the ropey pull of muscle as it yields beneath her jaw, tendons and veins she’ll be picking out of her teeth for days. She sucks on her molars and she can almost taste the mayonnaise and jellied pig’s feet that really weren’t as bad as she imagined they would be; or maybe it was just the look on his face when she tried it, nibbling with her front teeth the way her sister always teased her for—the look on his face, like she’s something new and found all at once, the pressure in the throat on the edge of a breath. She had giggled, she remembers, under the intensity of his stare, asked if there was ketchup on her face. He said no. She looked perfect, he said. Perfect, he mumbled. Perfect.

She's been three months on her own now, and she tries to tell herself that not much has changed—that she's survived this long, she'll survive the winter; she'll find a group and keep going. She still has his Bowie, and a pistol she picked up along the way—long empty, but who would know—and a few days of food if she rations herself. She has her own hands, thick with callus and dirt-brown. She has his voice in her ear, snapping at her when she reaches for the wrong berries, gruff when she scratches herself on a branch, furious when she wakes and can hardly lift her head—run, Beth, run, don't stop running, goddammit—warm as a kiss when she finds something useful, another way to survive. She has a thick fleece jacket she found in the charred remains of Terminus; she has good shoes and songs in her head. She'll be ok. She'll keep going.

She stays in houses until she runs out of bullets; she camps in trees until she can no longer lift herself off the ground. At last she's reverted to where they began—a suck-ass camp in the middle of the woods, protected only as far as it can be before she collapses into sleep.

She's honestly surprised it's taken this long for someone to find her.

She can't hear what they say, only the timbre of voices and her heart in her ears. They haven't shot her yet, which is good; they haven't touched her, even better. As long as they plan to bring her somewhere, she can get away from them—he taught her how to slip through knots, after they burned the shack, how to bring down a man twice her size and find her way in the dark. She'll get away. She's done it before. She's ready when she feels the tap on her shoulder.

Her heart sinks when she sees how big he is—not just his size, but the way he carries himself, the way he cradles his semi-auto like a third limb—but she holds herself like steel. She doesn't get to fall apart.

“You get back,” she says in a voice sharper than she wants, high and cracked like frozen slate.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa, easy there, darlin'.”

“Back up,” she barks through her parched throat, jerking her gun sharply, finger jumping on the trigger.

To her surprise, he does get back, raising both hands in the air, pointedly swinging his finger off the trigger. She doesn't relax, keeping the gun pointed at his head. A young woman steps out from behind him. This one doesn't lower her piece. Beth's heart is pounding.

“Now hold on, ma'am,” the man says, “we don't mean no harm.”

Beth laughs, short and harsh. “'Scuse me if I don't believe you.”

“You met some bad people on the road, then, huh?” he says, chuckling in what he must think is a disarming manner. The woman glances at him, shifting her hold on her pistol. “Haven't we all?” he continues. “But we ain't like that, here. I get that you're wary, a girl on her own—“

“How do you know I'm on my own?” Beth asks, praying he doesn't hear the shrill scratch at the back of her throat.

“It's pretty clear you ain't one of the Brady Bunch, doll.” He spreads his arms further, and in an exaggerated gesture lowers his gun to the ground. Beth notes the shift in his stance that belies a gun in his waistband. She keeps her own piece leveled. “Here's what we're gonna do—“

“No,” Beth interrupts, “I tell you what to do here. You're in my camp, uninvited, pointing guns as me while I sleep—I'll ask you nicely to leave me alone, or I swear I'll kill you.”

“Now, honey, you don't gotta do that.” He takes a step forward, palms spread. Beth shifts enough to feel the Bowie at her hip. “Just lower your gun nice and slow and we can chat—“

“I don't think—“

“Jesus Christ,” the girl with him mutters, suddenly stepping forward and wrenching back at his shoulder. He barely budges, but still swings to look at her, incredulous. “Did you never watch Law and Order, man?” Beth adjusts her sweaty hold. Then the girl, too, lays her gun on the ground, rising slowly. “Listen,” she says when she straightens, “I know Chuckles here isn't that convincing, but we aren't here to hurt you.”

Beth swallows. “What're you doing, then?”

“We want to help. We have a group—“

“Tara—“ the man growls warningly.

“—a group,” she says, looking at him pointedly before turning back to Beth, “a few miles away. We don't have much, but we can give you some food and shelter, a place if you want one.”

“Don't know when we decided that,” the man mutters.

“Hey, Abe—shut up.” Beth looks between them warily. “Listen,” Tara says, “we aren't renegades or anything. We have children with us.”

Something in Beth seizes at the word, and her focus drifts away. She almost loses her grip on the gun as she remembers the nights so long ago, when they'd lie face to face and Beth would sing her to sleep; weigh the tiny weight of her tiny hand against her palm; feel the angel-down at the crown of her head.

Children. She didn’t think there could be any children left.

“—four other women, plus me,” Tara is saying when Beth comes back. She looks at Beth earnestly. “You'll be safe with us.”

Beth frowns, unsure. The presence of women doesn’t mean anything; she knows that now. But there’s something in Tara’s earnest face that Beth hasn’t seen in a long time.

“Why do you think I need your help?”

“Puh-lease,” Abe drawls. “You're skinny enough you're wearing your ribs like hula hoops. Without some proper food you'll be dead in a week.”

“I've survived this long,” Beth says sharply.

“What kind of life is this though?” Tara asks.

Beth blinks, feeling another haze settle over her like a memory. A memory of a camp so much like this one, empty even with two bodies inside; the heavy weight of moonshine in her belly and his arm an iron bar across her chest. She remembers the house they had found, Gabriel's house; remembers the look on his face when he asked to stay there forever. She's had a lot of time to think about that; about what it would have been, to build a life with him; to come down the stairs every morning to that look in his eyes, like seeing the clear blue sky after emerging from a train wreck—she's thought about it. Thought about her sister whispering to her in the dark, of how badly she wants a baby but is so scared of ending up like... —and her daddy, planting flowers with the crops so they'll bloom for her.

She thinks of her mama, so long dead; of a shotgun shell bursting through her skull.

Beth looks between them—once, twice—then lowers her arms.

“You gonna take my weapons?”

“No,” Tara says quickly, cutting her companion off. She grins, crookedly. “Just don't use them on us, 'kay?”

Beth doesn't respond except to lever herself up. Abe doesn't look any smaller now that she's standing; Tara holsters her gun with practiced precision—and Beth nearly sways off her feet, adrenaline-drained and exhausted. She knows, then, that Abe is right—she wouldn't have survived much longer on her own. It nearly brings her to tears, this realization—how helpless she is, when it comes down to it—how in the hunger and the cold all her strength could be so easily swept away. If Abe and Tara had meant her harm, there's little she could have done to resist. She wants to fall to her knees then, talk to God, thank Him for sending her people she doesn't need to fight.

At least, not so far. She has a few miles yet.

She tries to be unobtrusive in the way she checks to be sure all her weapons are secure—the Bowie at her waist, two more knives at her ankle and in the small of her back—and holsters her gun warily, glaring at Abe when he weighs it with his gaze, smirking slightly.

“Well, get your kit and let's go if we're going,” he says, squinting at the sky and sniffing the air. “Storm's coming in.”

“We're leaving the rest of the snares?” Tara asks him as Beth swings her pack onto her back, trying not to show the way she stumbles under its weight.

“Let the asshole check them on his own time,” Abe says. “We'll get the little miss back, see what the others say.”

* * *

 

They walk in mutual, if somewhat strained, silence until a house looms up out of the woods. It looks so normal: white-paneled with blue shutters, curtains fluttering behind open windows—Beth has to stop, swallowing back rebellious tears. Even if they're leading her to death or worse, even if this is the last slice of sky she'll see—it looks like a _home_.

“Been a long time since you've been in a house?” Tara asks, drawing even with her from where she'd been bringing up the rear. Abraham glances back at them and snorts, waving to a woman watching them from the roof and continuing on.

“A few months,” Beth says, watching the woman duck inside an open window. “After a while I wasn't strong enough to clear a house on my own, and the last... I know a bit about hunting and tracking. I was better out here.”

“Well, we have enough people to clear pretty much anything,” Tara says, smiling.

The front door opens from the inside as Abraham approaches it. Beth's heart is pounding again. She'd been calm on the several-mile walk, almost in a trance, feeling oddly normal in the wake of a broad pair of shoulders. They'd come across several walkers, which Abraham dispatched with ease—and the way he moved, his gleeful grin as he smashed in their skulls, made Beth's stomach sink even lower, imagining herself at the mercy of those hands. Tara, at least, had gone out of her way to be kind, asking Beth's name and what had happened to her. Beth dodged the questions; saying it's been so long since someone used her name, she's found no need to remember it—that she'd been with a group and lost it, and now she's on her own. Tara had smiled sympathetically, telling her about the family she had lost—a sister, a niece, a father—until Beth started talking about a bush they passed just to change the subject. The last mile or so had been silent, nothing but the small stirrings of the forest, the life that was left.

“Hey,” Tara says, moving to hold Beth's wrist loosely. She jumps from the contact, and Tara removes her hand quickly. “Sorry, but—are you ok? You aren’t a prisoner here; you can go if you want. Abe'll pitch a fit, but—you never know, it might be good for him.”

Beth looks into her kind eyes, still soft after nearly two years at the end of the world.

She asks, a small knit in her brow, “Why do you trust me?”

Tara looks at her, and then she doesn't, eyes far off as she remembers something good, something bad, something that makes her turn back to Beth with a gaze that looks a hundred years old.

“We've all lost so much,” she says slowly, “believing in people is all we have left. It's supposed to be us against the dead, right? That's what life's always been supposed to be. It's just more important now.”

Beth nods hesitantly. She remembers also.

“Y'know, I said stuff like that to someone once.”

One side of Tara's mouth raises. “Must be right, then. Come on. You'll like this place—beds for everyone!”

They both enter the house, and Beth steps into another world.

The front door opens directly into a spacious kitchen so much like the one in her childhood home; flanked on one side by counters, on the other by a fridge and stove, a large wooden table against the back wall. It isn't clean, but it's cleared, with several packs sitting full and ready by the door. And then—

Sasha and Tyreese are leaning on the counter, looking in amusement at Abraham as he stands, lanky arms folded across his chest, giving Daryl Dixon a piece of his mind.

Daryl himself is sat at the kitchen table, sharpening his knife and very visibly only half listening; that half is only perceptible in the quirk of his eyebrow as he keeps his eyes on his work.

“—sprained ankle ain't no reason to let your own end down. Next time it'll be you tramping all over them woods after Miss Tara the girl scout, picking up strays—“

“Have any of you seen Rick?” Tara asks over Abraham's tirade as she swings her kit onto the counter.

“He's upstairs with Carl and Michonne,” Sasha says, glancing at Tara and smirking. “Take it you had a good time today?”

Tara snorts. “I wish. He wouldn't shut up until we found this girl—“

“Beth?”

The breathless gasp comes from the door to the living area, where Maggie—Beth's sister, Maggie, who bought her her first tampons and punched handsy assholes in the nose, _Maggie_ —standing half-collapsed against the doorframe, hair lank and in her eyes, staring in awe at the specter in the doorway. The entire room freezes like it's been encased in ice—Sasha gasps and Tyreese swallows and Daryl's knife falls to the table, rattling loudly against the wood—and then Maggie is stumbling forward like a lamed mare and throwing her arms around Beth's neck.

Beth staggers back into the wall at the force of the embrace. Maggie's head is slotted over Beth's shoulder, her collarbone shoved into Beth's neck, and she can hardly breathe under the assault of memories her sister’s scent brings. Maggie is sobbing, loud and wild and terrifying for Beth, who in months has not heard a noise this loud save for a gunshot, and she digs her fingers below Maggie's shoulder blades, hoping the pressure will force Maggie to let go or for Beth to wake up because—there is Carol, and Michonne, and Carl carrying—and they're all around her, pressed in tight with their familiar smells and the breeze of their voices, which Beth had so many times heard whispered on the wind—and there is Rick cupping her cheek and Judith's clean baby smell tangling in her hair and Maggie's hand still like a vice around her own—and in one moment the crowd parts to show him, _him_ , standing and staring at her like the last fence post in a flood, eyes darting between her and the pressing crowd around her—

—and she still can't breathe as he leaves the room, Maggie pressing kiss after kiss against her dry cheeks.


	2. Survive and Convalesce

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After the house has gone to sleep, Daryl approaches Beth.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A huge especial thanks to milkshakemicrowave for her amazing editing work. This chapter would still be a mess if not for her, so make sure to give her lots of love.

She looks like a vision, sitting there on the sofa, knees to her chest, illuminated by a cluster of candles and staccato claps of lightning. It's nothing like how Daryl had imagined he'd find her, those many months, but she's here; scrubbed clean and dressed in Maggie's oversized clothing (oversized on both of them, with the way Maggie's lost weight), a crumb from dinner clinging to her upper lip. Daryl had watched from the corner as their family crowded around her, Maggie shoving canned peaches and stale crackers into her face until she looked ready to cry—but she hadn't. Hadn't spoken a word, that Daryl had seen, although when the girls disappeared into Maggie's room, he supposes she might have said something. Something about what had happened to her, all those months on her own. About the ways that Daryl failed her.

He stands there for a long time, fiddling with his knife and the deja vu of another room in another house where she had sat small and sweet, writing her heart on the piano keys and taking him somewhere—a place he's never been, not lounging in the prison with Rick or chopping carrots with his momma, and definitely not in a haze of smoke with Merle. A place that's been curled up inside of him, waiting for a burst of sun or a friendly glance or—the poetry fails him. Her. It had been waiting for her. Her with her shiny braid and rosebud cheeks, the silly way she looked at him in the kitchen over not enough meals, like it was something she'd been dreaming of too. Her with her stupid hope and obstinate neck that arched from her shoulders like a question mark, pale, wondering, gazing at him through the shadows. A neck he had imagined slashed into, or bruised, or swaying beneath clouded, ravenous eyes—but her neck is right there, tucked beneath her chin, just like her hands are there below her face and her lips and eyes aren't moving.

She looks tiny, now, smaller than he's ever seen her, wrapped in a shapeless grey tee, skeletal arms clasping her knees like a life buoy. Her hair is still damp, clinging in tendrils to her cheeks. Daryl realizes he's never seen it down before; but there it is, bridging the chasms of her face.

“I know you're there, Daryl,” she says quietly, and he doesn't even start—just limps across the room and leans his bow against the coffee table, sits and spreads his legs at her side.

They sit quietly, like they used to, listening to the pounding of the rain on the roof and walls, neither wanting to be the first to break the silence. They've never had trouble taking turns to speak. It's the speaking at all that's the problem—why he hardly uttered a word between the prison and the country club, why she could only express her grief through drink. Daryl's never been one for exposition, and neither has Beth; but he feels the questions burning in his throat, the ones he doesn't want to burden her with, any more than their answers already must. He knows she wouldn't begrudge the asking. But he's hesitant to start. It's something he's missed, just being with her, sitting at her side and experiencing the world. And yet—he wants to say something; he wants _her_ to say something—to absolve him, to blame him, to remember—anything, to hear her voice in the room.

“Why did you leave before?” she asks, soft, small.

Daryl shifts uncomfortably, looking down. “Didn't want to get in the way.”

“You wouldn't have.” She turns her head to rest her cheek on her knees and gaze at him, blinking her tired blue eyes. “I wanted to see you. Talk to you.”

Daryl shrugs, heart pounding. “Here now, ain't I?”

“Yeah.” Beth smiles softly, and even as thunder sounds it's like the clouds breaking. He takes it as an invitation to look at her, really look at her; run his eyes across the new lines on her face, her unslashed throat, her unbroken bones, eyes still bright and cheeks burning; watch the rise and fall of her thin chest beneath her collar bones, the way her stony nostrils flutter.

“What happened to Glenn?” she asks quietly.

Daryl sucks a breath in through his nose, clenches his jaw. “Your sister say anything?”

Beth shakes her head. “No, but—he's dead, isn't he?”

He wants to touch her. It feels like he's always wanted to touch her, that far off shining brilliance; in grade school across stubby pencils and wide-ruled paper, upside down beneath a car, gazing at ragged jeans and worn converse; the years of being chased across lawns by mothers in housedresses and fathers with shotguns, all with Merle howling at his side. He's never been with a girl Merle didn't approve of first. He took pride in that, his big brother did, finding the cooch with the bounciest tits and loopiest smiles, taking her for a ride and throwing her to Daryl for a few morning knocks.

“Yeah,” he finally says. “It was a... went quick, at least. Seen worse. Done worse, too.”

They were always more to Merle's taste than Daryl's anyway.

“You kept me alive, you know,” she says, out of the blue. He frowns. “Don't look at me like that. 'S true.” She brings her legs down to cross them in front of her and clasp her hands in her lap. The movement shuffles her a little closer to him, and his throat clenches at the familiar shadows the candles throw across her cheeks. “Hunting, tracking—I didn't have a bow, but I could set snares. I could hunt, kill things.” She's very quiet. Then she snorts. “Even had you yelling at me in my head, telling me when I was being stupid.”

“You ain't stupid.”

“You're just saying that cause you're happy to see me.” She's grinning at him and he doesn't even try to correct her. “I was real stupid. Slept all out in the open. Y'all wouldn't have found me if I weren't being stupid.”

“You survived, though.” She looks away from him, and he feels it like a physical loss. It makes him angry. “If that asshole hadn't taken you—“

“Gabriel was a good person,” Beth says quietly, looking at her hands. “It wasn't his fault.”

“Kidnappin' you? Settin' a herd of walkers on us?”

“He was scared.”

Daryl frowns. “What's he got to be scared of?”

Beth smiles again, and looks at him. “He saw you when you went to get the dog.”

“You sayin' it's my fault?”

Beth giggles. “You freaked him out.” She shuffles closer to him and lays her head on his shoulder. He stiffens. “You're scary,” she whispers.  

Daryl closes his eyes and breathes in deeply, trying not to unravel at the feeling of her against him. Her hair is damp on his cheek and obscures his view of her face; he can only see her nose, and the curve of her lips, and her little hands playing with her over-long sleeves. His hand is lying limply on his thigh and he wants to sweep the hair away, run his eyes over the flutter of her eyelashes and the crinkle of her brow as she talks.

“It's so weird being here,” she says in the same hush. “I haven't talked to anyone in so long. And everyone lookin' at me... after I'd been out there a while I'd feel eyes on me.” She shifts and he can catch the curve of an eyebrow now. “All the time. And now that people are actually looking at me all I want is to hide.”

“They want stuff from you.”

Beth glances up at him, then back away. “Yeah.” Her voice breaks a little on the word, water spilling into her throat and Daryl can't stop himself from reaching into her lap and pressing his palm against hers. She gives him no time to doubt; just grips him with both hands like a lifeline, sits there breathing in the quiet and each other's presence, the steady drum of rain on the roof and the fading rolls of thunder.

“Storm's movin' on,” Daryl says quietly, and he looks down and Beth is crying.

They're silent, the moondrop tears that slide down her cheeks, but it hits him like a Chinese gong the way her eyes haven't changed—they're swimming in wetness, but nothing in them has changed. She's looking at a candle, staring into a candle, holding his hand until the knuckles grind together and when a little sob bubbles its way out of her chest he knows he is lost.

As gently as he can, Daryl extricates his hand from her hold to reach his arm behind her and clasp her opposite shoulder, squeezing it awkwardly. She settles closer into him and he can feel her breaths, little gasps, puffing against the thin fabric of his shirt; she presses her cheek against him and the tears wet his skin.

“Want me to get Maggie?” he asks.

“No,” Beth says, too loudly. “No, I can't... I can't breathe around her.  She won’t stop askin' questions. Where I'd been, what I'd seen, if I'd been hurt.”  She sits up, then, nearly shrugging out of his grasp but stopping with a hand on his chest. They've gotten all tangled up somehow, her knees drawn up over his and his hand choked by her hair. Beth worries her lip with her teeth, looking down into her lap. “Maggie ain't doin' too well, is she.”

“You're here. She'll get better.”

She looks at him, her eyes huge and bleeding in the candlelight. “I didn't think about her at all,” she whispers, almost beyond hearing, “I couldn't. I couldn't think of her and see her alive. After Gabriel, after...”

“When he took you,” Daryl grinds out, “what he did—“

“Gabriel didn't hurt me,” Beth says. “He didn't know I was in the house, and when he saw me on the road... it was so fast, I didn't know what was happening.” Beth looks up at him. “I told him to go back for you,” she says quietly. “But he wouldn't listen.”

“He was good to you, though... he didn't...”

“No. Not him.”

Daryl doesn't say anything to that, and Beth seems glad of it. She smiles and tilts her head, looks at his mouth when he nervously wets his lips. She glances back up at him and snuggles again into his side, deeper, like she wants to crawl inside his skin.

“What happened to me after Gabriel... I've tried not to think about it, you know? I didn’t have time. Every day, it was...I get it now,” she says quietly, so quietly he almost misses it, has to press his ear back into her hair to hear. “I get why you were like that, after the prison. It's too much to feel all at once, this world. Maybe it always was, and I was just to blind to see it.”

Sometimes while Merle was sleeping off a bender, Daryl would drift by the elementary school; watch the happy little families in their happy little lives, the mothers with smooth cheeks and soft mouths, hands small and warm around lunch pails and diaper bags, always clean, always smiling. They weren't the hard girls he knew, and he'd scoff at them, imagining their faces at the other end of his father's fists; how easily they'd break.

After Carol, after Michonne, after Lori, he knows better—knows that the mothers are the strongest of them all; knows that breaking is just another kind of surviving.

Beth squeezes her eyes shut and reaches for him; he takes her hand again without a word, feels the new strength in it. They had always been so small, her hands; made for the keys they danced across, between baby gums or a farmer's fingers—not for him, never for him; him with hands that had rolled joints and cut crack, had shaken with the buzz of booze or the adrenaline of a fight. His jagged hands, large hands; with calluses bone-deep, dirt drummed inside the marrow like a tattoo; the blood that's seeped its way in.

Her hands are still small, but they aren't soft; his palm scrapes against hers, and she answers with her own scars and scabs. They're made for each other now.

“Beth—“

“I couldn't get him to go back for you. It was all so fast, on the road, and he thought he was saving me, he thought you'd done something to me... by the time I convinced him it was too late, I didn't know where to look. You were just gone, like Maggie, like Rick... I couldn't see her, Daryl,” Beth whispers, leaning close like she needs him to know, “I could only believe in one thing at a time. I had to believe in you. That you'd find me, that what you taught me would lead me back to you. And when it didn't... then I couldn't believe in anything.”

“That ain't true.”

Beth gives a watery laugh, tears still streaming down her cheeks. “It isn't?”

“No. You had to believe.” He squeezes her hand, forces himself to not look away; to be there; to be here. “You're here. You're _you_.”

“I'm not a good person anymore, Daryl.”

Daryl presses his forehead to hers, closes his eyes. She smells like baby shampoo, and fire, the ashes of something burned down. He opens his eyes, and she's looking right back.

“Ain't so bad.” He shrugs, smiles. “I never was.”

“You're the best there is, Daryl Dixon.” They gaze at each other in the near-dark, half-breathing the other's air. Daryl wonders what her tears would taste like on his lips.

Even close, closed, muted, she's the same; she's Beth. She doesn't land him on his back, or spin him on his head; she leaves him just as he is. It's the world she turns right side up.

“I just want to sleep,” she says quietly. He can feel the words on his mouth. “I want to sleep, but when I close my eyes I still feel like someone's watchin' me. Like this place, this house, you,” she squeezes his hand, “it's all some stupid dream, and if I fall asleep I'll just wake up alone again.”

“You ain't alone,” Daryl says, more harshly than he means to. She looks up at him and his throat closes like there's water in his lungs too. He cups a hand around the back of her head and presses his face into her hair, breathes her in; feels her arms snake around his waist, strong like the legs that have suddenly clambered into his lap. He's cradling her close, holding her like a lover as she sniffles into his neck, a little hand curled around the collar of his shirt, burning between their two hearts.

_I ain't losing you again_ , he mouths, rocking as she cries—doesn't say, not in the air that breezes through his lungs; but by the way she presses against him, he can't help but think she understood.


	3. Live At Last

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They find each other, in every way a person can be found.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A million thanks to Mary as usual for beta'ing and being generally amazing.
> 
> I'm so happy to finish an old project I can't even tell you. Also, be sure to listen to the song this fic is named after, by City and Colour - it's so them I could cry. What am I saying, I DO cry.
> 
> Note the rating change ;)
> 
> Hope you enjoy!

It's past midnight when Beth extricates herself from Maggie's sleeping arms, tip-toes down the corridor, and knocks on his door.

She doesn't hear a sound from within until the door itself swings open, revealing Daryl, fully clothed in all but his socks. The sight of his bare feet catches her for a few moments—long and pale, paler than she imagined his skin could be, even under all the dirt. Her eyes travel up his body, taking in the long limbs, the steady torso, the sleep-rustled hair and questioning eyes as he leans against the doorframe, taking her in too.

“Y'alright?” he asks, voice low and scratchy like it was by the piano—like the whole world's sleeping and he's holding his breath against the waking, cocooned in a little room at her side. Beth breathes out steadily, trying to calm her hammering heart— _it's Daryl, just Daryl, you've seen his skin torn inside out and you sewed back all the missing pieces, there's nothing left of him to be scared o_ f—and what a thought that is, that this man of smoke and leather, who breathed like a dragon when she neared him on the farm, who set her legs quaking and her back hunched with one cut of his too-sharp eyes—that this man would be the one who feels like coming home.

Still, her voice is quiet, timid. She can be like that, now.

“Can I come in?”

He looks at her, fathomless, and for a horrible moment she's frightened he'll say no—when he gives a jerky nod and steps aside, ushering her in.

The room he's chosen for himself is the same as any room they've stayed in—ransacked, rusty, full of ghosts. His shoes and socks are set by the night table, and he places his bow alongside—she didn't notice he brought it to the door—and by the time the door is closed and he's turned around she has her shirt over her head, falling to a puddle on the floor.

He looks like a pig backed into a corner by an ax, the way she'd seen her daddy do it one year before Christmas—eyes rolling in their whites and body bowed away from her like she's carrying the plague.

“Beth...”

“I know you weren't exactly... expecting this,” Beth says, wishing she hadn't dropped her shirt so she could wring it in her hands. “And I wasn't thinkin' about it earlier, honest. And maybe it's silly, and irresponsible, and too soon, but... I want it.”

Daryl blinks wildly, clutching the edge of the night table like he could use it as a weapon.

“Want what?”

Beth shrugs apologetically.

“You.”

“Nah...” Daryl says, backing away further until his thighs hit the bed and his knees collapse, sending him sprawling. When Beth starts moving forward he seems to notice the vulnerable position he's in. He tries to shoot to his feet but she's too close and he collapses to his butt, looking up at her wordlessly, eyes on anything but her chest. She knows how ridiculous she must look, in Maggie's borrowed bra, two sizes too large—but he won't look at it, not even a glance, and that's how she knows he wants her.

She steps in between his spread legs, and he looks too scared to move.

“Daryl,” she murmurs, reaching out to brush his temple. She pauses for the flinch, the knee-jerk reaction—but he doesn't even move, just stares at her, wordless, as her knuckles settle against his skin. He shivers violently as she trails her hand down his jaw, snagging briefly in the fuzz of his beard.

“What are you doing, Beth?” he asks through a closed throat.

Beth can't help the giggle that bubbles out of her chest, hiccuping and stuttered from lack of practice. “I was hopin' it'd be you.”

Daryl shakes his head slowly, her hand still on his face. “This is a dream,” he mutters. “This whole night has been a dream.”

“Ain't a dream, Dixon.”

“Fuck.”

“Daryl.” Beth brings her other hand up to his face, cradles him between her palms. “Let me be with you.”

“You ain't... Beth, you can't be serious,” he pleads. “After everything that happened—“

“What, Daryl?” Beth says, loud enough that his eyes widen and he glances towards the door. “What happened to me?”

“I just—“

“Was I raped? Is that what you're trying to ask?”

“You don't gotta—“

“Cause that doesn't change anything. Not here.”

“It changes everything, Beth.”

“Bullshit.” Beth slides her hands down his neck to his shoulders, smoothing over the tense muscles. “It doesn't change us. How I feel.”

“Beth—“

“I don't give a damn, you saying I ain't ready for this. When's the last time any of us did anything we were ready for? My daddy wasn't ready to die. I wasn't ready to be taken from you. And maybe I ain't ready to make love. But this time, I get the choice. And I choose you. Every time, I'd choose you.”

He looks about ready to cry. She takes pity on him, moving to step out of his space. At the last moment, his legs come in and his hands shoot out and grab her by the hips, trapping her.

He opens his mouth as if to say something, then bites his lip, silenced. She waits, watching his face, heart pounding. She doesn't know what she'll do if he sends her away now; doesn't know what she has to go back to, if he doesn't want her.

But he does want her; she can see it in the burning of his eyes, the silent purse of his mouth; he taps out his wanting in the tug of his fingers that pull her towards the bed, settle her once again between his legs. She smiles softly, settles her fingers over his, blinks away the tears in her eyes.

“Maggie'll kill me for touchin' her baby sister,” he mutters, eyes finally skating across her torso, lingering hungrily at the wings of her collarbone, the tub of her sunken belly. He brings back his hand, brushes hesitant fingers across her belly button. Beth breathes in sharply, the light touch almost painful against her starved skin.

“Maggie ain't here,” she whispers. She once again covers his hand over her stomach, sways forward at the wave of dizziness from standing so long. “I want you, Daryl,” she says, low, rumbling, in a tone far more suited to his voice than hers, and it makes Daryl’s hands flex against her skin. “But this ain’t about lust. I wanna be close. I wanna feel like a human being again. And no one makes me feel more human than you.”

“I'm the one supposed to say that,” he says, so quietly she almost doesn't hear, wouldn't hear if her eyes weren't already dancing across his lips, the thin, open line of them. She raises her hands and sinks them into his hair, palms resting on the ridge of his cheekbones.

“That a yes, then?” she whispers, leaning in closer so she can taste his breath, unwashed and rank but sweet in the knowledge that it's been in his lungs, fed the beat of his heart and the rush of his veins. Sweet in the way his hands are sweet, child-like, even, as they slide along her jeans to the back of her thighs, hum against the fabric in an almost non-touch, the press of them is so light. There's such tragedy in his eyes that it stops her own breath; makes her pause in her leaning forward, in the stroke of her fingers. She pauses, swaying between his legs.

He swallows, wets his lips. His throat opens, and her heart spills with it.

“I missed you so bad when you were gone, Beth Greene.”

She leans forward and kisses him.

His lips are warm, dry, _perfect_ as they move against hers, hesitant at first, tiptoeing across the chap of her upper lip and the slickness of her lower where she had licked it, warming, welcoming for him. And as the moments pass—the pulse in his thumb beating a staccato into the crease of her thigh, her fingers pressing into his temples like they could phase through—he takes his welcome; his kiss grows stronger, his hands tighter, pulling her in as his legs widen and his head tilts back, tugged by her gentle hands in his hair.

“You're good at that,” he murmurs, eyes hazy and unfocused as he looks up at her, punch-drunk on the taste of Beth Greene.

She hums deep in her throat and kisses him again, more invasive now, insistent, licking past his willing lips and tangling with his tongue as he scooches himself closer and pulls her in tighter. She takes the moment to swing her legs across his, and her knees hit the bed and her stomach meets his chest and she stutters a little at how hot he is through his shirt, at the way he's already pressing into her, hard and insistent. He can almost feel her bones through her pajama pants as he circles his hands around the tops of her thighs, kissing wet and deep.

She tugs at his hair like a horse's reigns and what can he do but follow, setting his palm into the trough of her lower back and swinging them both around so she can bounce on the mattress, him on top of her, kissing again within moments.

“Daryl,” she murmurs, knees curling like fingers around his hips as he kisses into her neck, easing the tie out of her hair and onto his wrist as her hands flex against his back. He trails kisses down to her shoulder where he sucks on the bone, stark under her skin, so lost in the feel of her it takes him a minute to notice her gentle tugs on his hair.

He raises his head and looks down at her, eyes dark and heavy and a little dazed as they flit across her face: cheeks flushed and lips red, pulling in little gasps of air like there's no oxygen in the room.

“Yeah?” he rumbles, and she can feel it in her chest where it's pressed to the barrel of his, thick and hard against her depleted curves.

She squeezes his waist with her thighs, arching into him until he inhales sharply through his nose. “Please, Daryl,” she says quietly, fluttering her fingertips against his neck.

Daryl brushes a lock of hair off her face, palm lingering against the curve of her cheek. He smirks almost despite himself, like he needs the lightness, chuckles at her desperation. “Sure you don't want me just for my body?”

“What, _this_ body?” Beth teases, sliding her hands down his shoulders, squeezing his biceps through his shirt. His fingernails trail down her neck, and she shivers, the light mood fleeing. She bites her lip and looks up at him, slides her arms around him and draws him in closer. “Maybe I'm just tired of waiting for something good,” she murmurs.

“You're always somethin' good, Beth,” he whispers, reaching down to grasp her hip and slip a thumb beneath her sweatpants, into the hollow of her pelvis. He leans down, kisses her, closing his eyes and feeling the flutter of her eyelashes against his cheek before reaching behind her and unhooking her bra.

It takes him a few tries and she's giggling by the time he gets it, watching as he flings it away with a grimace of disgust. When he turns back to her she's already undoing the buttons on his shirt, and she has to clear her throat a few times to get him to stop staring and rise up so she can get the ones on his belly.

She's undone his flannel and pulled aside the tee and shucked off the undershirt when he's back against her, kissing across her collarbone and down, down until he has one tented peak in his mouth, swirling his tongue and making her gasp.

“Daryl,” she says, burying her hands in his hair before pushing them down between them to get at his jeans.

He grabs her two hands in one of his, pulling them aside and flicking his tongue against her. “Pushy,” he says around her nipple, and her heart gives a few hard claps at the drop of spit that rolls from his lips down her breast, and seizes in her throat when he abandons the nipple to lap it up, trailing it down to her sternum. He releases her hands to spread his across her ribcage, fingers traipsing up and down the boney rivets like he's counting them in his head. Beth arches into him again until he takes the other breast in his mouth, sucking at her like she's the bottom of a jelly jar as she slides her hand up his back to the first scar.

He must feel her fingers stutter and he freezes against her, head jerking up, lips releasing her nipple with a loud pop.

Before the panic in his eyes has time to settle she's withdrawn her hand and clasped one of his, holding him still with her gaze as she brings it down to her own skin, across her hip and onto her back and—

It takes him a moment to understand what he finds; she holds his hand against the storm of emotions that flicker across his face, settling somewhere between fury and despair.

He'd know the raised, ropey razor of a belting scar anywhere.

“Beth—“

“It ain't worth it, Daryl,” she says softly, stroking his knuckles before letting go. She moves her hand back to his own back, settling firmly amongst his scars. Her gaze is steady and burning. “I'm with you, now. I'm _with_ you.”

“The one that did it—“

“I took care of it,” Beth says.

He looks into her eyes, and his hand flexes against her skin.

_You said you could take care of yourself. You did._

God, how far away that feels.

Without breaking his gaze, Beth undoes the snap on his jeans and sinks her hand below the waistline.

Daryl's eyes flutter shut as her hand closes around his length. A great sigh shoots out through his nose, bathing her face in warmth as she twists her wrist to move in the confined space, only able to stroke an inch or so, and only very slowly; the shallow pants in Daryl's chest demand it, the thud of his heart in the veins beneath her hand the beat to which her fingers dance. What she can feel of his dick is thick and smooth and it makes something deep inside her stir to life.

“Take off your pants, Daryl,” she says.

Daryl lets out a small huff and moves to comply, kicking off one leg at a time until he's bare above her, a smudgy outline in the moonlight, all long lines and hard edges and Beth feels the flush to the tips of her toes, she wants him so bad.

She feels a stab of shyness when he reaches for her pajama bottoms and he pauses, glancing up at her with his hand on her hip, heavy with weight and promise.

“We don't gotta do this, Beth,” he says quietly, tone even despite the hardness Beth can feel brushing her leg.

“No. I want to,” she says. “I just don't know how good I'll be. You know,” she waves her hand at her protruding ribs, “with the whole starvation and all.”

Daryl smiles crookedly and rubs his thumb across her hip. “I ain't been with anyone in five years. Pretty sure I get the better deal here.”

“Impossible,” Beth murmurs, slinging her arms around Daryl's neck. “I get you.”

Even in the low light Beth can see Daryl's cheeks darken; but his embarrassment doesn't hinder the sure hands running over her legs, sliding her pajama bottoms down and off.

Beth can't imagine he can see much of her, but he's staring like he wants to, and it gets her hotter than anything, lying there waiting for him.

His palm closes over the flesh of her inner thigh, thumb running along the hair at the edge of her mons before slowly gliding across it, barely a touch, barely a shiver, skating above her skin until he reaches her cleft, where he presses down, spreading her, opening her to him. Beth feels the cool air against her cunt. She shivers.

It's with a sigh that he leans down to taste her.

Beth gasps loudly enough that Daryl jerks up, lips already glistening. Beth lies, legs splayed, panting, as a crooked smile climbs across his face.

“You still want me?” he asks.

“God, yes,” she rasps, collapsing backwards as he again lowers his head.

He starts at the top, at the stretched skin above her clit; just brushing his lips across it, inhaling the musk of her pubic hair as his fingers slip into a V and sink lower, spreading her outer lips. Beth's legs twitch around his ears as he takes his time, moving his nose back and forth, peeking his tongue from between his lips and tasting the salty sweat of her.

“Daryl.”

He glances up at her with a gaze that stops her heart. Even in the dim, she sees it clearly; no matter what he's said or hasn't said, what he's done or failed to do, Daryl Dixon would walk to the surface of the sun if it means he gets her like this: spread and pliable beneath him, surrounded by the creak of a house and the moan of trees outside and sunk in a sigh as he licks down between her lips, skating past her clit to take her inner labia in his mouth, sucking softly and flicking it with his tongue before continuing down, down, down to her weeping entrance.

Beth can feel his inexperience as well as his earnestness; he moves tentatively, like to go faster would scare her, or spoil it, the stillness of this night. For it is still, still like the night at the piano and twilight on the porch, still like the fluttering of her lungs as she fights to control her breathing, keep it silent, to draw in the night and hold it close. His hands are soft where he holds her thighs open, lips parted and wet as they seal over her hole, tongue probing the edges before slipping inside as she whimpers above him, thighs tightening into knots like the sheets in her fists. His nose nudges her clit and her legs jump; his hand closes harder around her thigh and her breath comes out in a sudden “ah” that makes his eyes flick to her again.

She doesn't want to lose those eyes.

“Look at me,” she breathes in a voice so apart from her own, breathy and deep and a tone she's never heard or thought to hear again; aroused and heady and so, so in love.

For it's with love that his eyes crinkle up at her, serious in a way that would be comical if he didn't then mouth up again, eyes on her, eyes in her, closing the flesh between her lips wholly in his mouth, lipping at her labia before drawing the flat of his tongue the length of her cunt. Beth shudders and grips the sheets as he does it again and again, spreading her slick and making it easier when he arrives at her clit to close his lips around it and suck her like a lolly. Beth bites her lip so hard she wouldn't be surprised if it bleeds, it feels so good; the leisurely way he pulls at her, the tug of her abdomen through the head of her cunt, the slow building wave that clenches her tummy and rocks her thighs as his finger inches its way inside her, stretching the walls and seeped in the fluttering of her pussy.

Beth comes like the tide up the shore, slow and rolling in throbs like thunder that echo in her ears long after they’re past. She lies back against the pillows and trembles as he swirls his finger around inside her a few more times, relishing the roll of contractions as the orgasm ebbs through her.

Not once, as she trembled and shook, ached and swore, did he turn his eyes from hers.

He goes slowly to his hands and haunches, sliding his tongue across his lips as he looks at her, flushed and spent beneath him. She feels it, then, the ache of his love; the steadiness, the neverendingness of it that fills her near to bursting; that makes her want to come all over again, just to keep it in the world.

She reaches out a hand. He doesn't hesitate to take it, slip his fingers between hers, entwined like the lovers they suddenly—have always been—are.

“Come here.”

Daryl crawls slowly up her body, shuddering them both when his dick taps against her inner thigh. He doesn't plunge into her though, not like she expects him to, but keeps going; sinks into her body between her legs, erection trapped momentarily between their bellies in a way that makes Beth flush again. His elbows land on either side of her head, and he cradles her softly as he rolls them onto their sides, legs twined together and his cock still a hungry weight on her skin.

He doesn't lead her hands to it, though; doesn't rub against her, or roll in her wetness. With one arm spread out beneath her neck, he brings the other hand to her face, cradles her cheek. For a few long minutes they lie there, breathing the other's air, memorizing faces with hands and eyes as boots creak on the roof above them.

“Tyreese must be coming in—“

“I love you, Beth.”

She pauses, then; sucks a breath into the hole his words have carved inside her; fills it up, with the press of him warm against her length; keeps it safe, with the pound of his heart against her chest.

He's looking unsure now, glancing down towards her breasts and sliding his hand to her neck, thumb cupped under her chin. With any other man the hold would be possessive, but she knows it as questioning, waiting, feeling for the flutter of her pulse as he reads her like he would a skittish rabbit.

She doesn't say anything, though, not even an “oh.” Just waits, heart thundering, as he looks back up at her, a strength in his eyes she's never seen.

“I fuckin' love you, Beth Greene.”

A lighter step wanders across the roof, settles somewhere above their window.

Beth's eyes flood with tears, and she presses her arm under his, fingers spreading across his back with something like relief.

“I ain't gonna stop.”

“I know.”

“Not ever.”

She looks into his eyes; the earnestness there, the urgency, the implicit, stroking warmth that falls into Beth's body like a sucking's milk, rich and sweet and cherished.

She presses her forehead to his forehead, her hand to his cheek. He breathes against her mouth, and she swallows him down. He's part of her now. He's been part of her for a long time.

“I know, Daryl.”

He brushes a scar on her back; tugs her in tight.

“I love you too.”

 


End file.
